How come Match Volume isn't always accurate for me?

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Craig Reeves
Posts: 14
Joined: Mon Jun 11, 2007 11:23 am

How come Match Volume isn't always accurate for me?

Post by Craig Reeves »

Hi everybody!

I'm having some trouble with mastering one of my rap songs. You see, when I eq it and it sounds nice and everything (at least to me). I'll match the volume with a song off of a new CD. I'll play them both back to back and the CD is still MUCH louder than my stuff. Even after I used IntuitQ, low-shelved it at 45 Hz, and eq'd it to where all the sharp dips and peaks are smoothed out. I can make it sound GREAT, but I just can't get it loud enough. If I raise my limiter up too much then I'll get that pumping sound which I'm trying to avoid.

I tried using Ozone to limit my work, as well. I limited it to where it would reach an RMS power level of -10 or -11 ish in most cases - but I still can't get these to compete in loudness with other CD's of similiar genre. What are these guys doing? How can I make my stuff that loud, too? Any help will be greatly appreciated.
HarBal
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Post by HarBal »

Craig,

You'll probably find that those CD's you are referring to have used compression as well as limiting to get that loudness. compression over the full dynamic range with a ratio of 1.2 or 1.3 would probably raise the average levels by as much as 3 dB or so.

Be that as it may, I really don't understand your concern about the loudness level. If someone wants it loud there is the volume control and I'm not trying to be facetious. Whilst the CD you are comparing it to may sound louder, it more than likely, has less punch. When it gets played back on the radio all tracks get compressed to the same volume level and you generally find the tracks that were least limited come out sounding best. In a car, or a living room you can turn the volume up.

Too many people are caught up in futile loudness wars with little understanding of the real damage they're doing to their music. Do me a favour. Take your loud reference CD and rip a track off it to a wave file. Now load your best track with -11dB average level as reference in HarBal and the loud track as the one your EQ'ing. Then match the loudness of the two (by lowering the gain slider) so they sound equally loud. Now listen carefully to both tracks and tell me what you hear and what you think. Provided your recording was good in the first place, I'd be very surprise to find you saying the loud one sounds qualitatively best! Only with a test like this will you truly understand what you are losing by over-limiting and and compressing music but I guess most have never conducted such an unbiased test so they're blissfully unaware.

As Michael Stavrou says "minimum voltage, maximum illusion" is what you should be aiming for. Most aim for "maximum voltage" and say to hell with the rest. As a consequence, I find most current popular music releases bitterly disappointing. As such, I don't buy much new music CD's cos I just end up feeling ripped off.

Cheers,


Paavo.
zumbido
Posts: 123
Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2004 11:52 am
Location: Los Angeles
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Post by zumbido »

Craig,

If you want to send me a sample of your track and a sample of the CD track you are trying match I can give it a try.

I've been able to get pretty 'loud' sounding masters.

Paavo is absolutely correct in everything he is saying. But I do understand the volume wars game that you are up against.

Upload your files to yousendit.com and send/forward the link to: studio@zumbido.com.

If I can match the perceived CD volume, I'll tell you how I did it.
Craig Reeves
Posts: 14
Joined: Mon Jun 11, 2007 11:23 am

Post by Craig Reeves »

HarBal wrote:Craig,

You'll probably find that those CD's you are referring to have used compression as well as limiting to get that loudness. compression over the full dynamic range with a ratio of 1.2 or 1.3 would probably raise the average levels by as much as 3 dB or so.

Be that as it may, I really don't understand your concern about the loudness level. If someone wants it loud there is the volume control and I'm not trying to be facetious. Whilst the CD you are comparing it to may sound louder, it more than likely, has less punch. When it gets played back on the radio all tracks get compressed to the same volume level and you generally find the tracks that were least limited come out sounding best. In a car, or a living room you can turn the volume up.

Too many people are caught up in futile loudness wars with little understanding of the real damage they're doing to their music. Do me a favour. Take your loud reference CD and rip a track off it to a wave file. Now load your best track with -11dB average level as reference in HarBal and the loud track as the one your EQ'ing. Then match the loudness of the two (by lowering the gain slider) so they sound equally loud. Now listen carefully to both tracks and tell me what you hear and what you think. Provided your recording was good in the first place, I'd be very surprise to find you saying the loud one sounds qualitatively best! Only with a test like this will you truly understand what you are losing by over-limiting and and compressing music but I guess most have never conducted such an unbiased test so they're blissfully unaware.

As Michael Stavrou says "minimum voltage, maximum illusion" is what you should be aiming for. Most aim for "maximum voltage" and say to hell with the rest. As a consequence, I find most current popular music releases bitterly disappointing. As such, I don't buy much new music CD's cos I just end up feeling ripped off.

Cheers,


Paavo.


Yeah, you're definitely right! I guess I shouldn't have too much fear about my music not being able to compete with the CD's then. I mean, it's not like they're soft or anything but they just didn't sound as loud as the new CD's I got so I thought I was mastering wrong.

If you guys would like to listen to one of my works, check out my myspace at http://www.myspace.com/cdreeves and listen to Tell Me Now.
HarBal
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Post by HarBal »

Hello Craig,

I had a listen to the track "tell me now". Excellent work! I can't really fault it. Nice balance and ambiance, plenty loud but well preserved dynamics. I particularly like the crispness of the vocal parts. I don't think you have anything to worry about as far as recording quality is concerned.

Cheers,


Paavo.
uncajesse
Posts: 27
Joined: Tue Apr 17, 2007 10:53 am

Post by uncajesse »

i would listen but your myspace page has been deleted or whatever...

anywho, check out a free demo of Voxengo Elephant, and use these settings:
http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/8388 ... antwj1.gif

i have yet to hear a limiter that's as loud while also preserving the transients so well - without causing a ton of clipping & harmonic distortion.
Hyvver
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon Apr 09, 2012 6:44 pm
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How come Match Volume isnt always accurate for me

Post by Hyvver »

Install YSlow in Firefox do a site test

then try the following code in your .htaccess file back up the original

You will need the apache modules installed for it to work most are common installs on apache

Code:
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